Vans for wheelchair users

If you have a friend or relative with a physical disability, which makes him/her a wheelchair user, then you can understand the challenges they face all the time, especially when traveling.

Modifying a vehicle to van to make it accessible to a wheelchair can be really expensive. To enable my wife's grandfather - Atok, who's a wheelchair user, to ride comfortably without getting off his wheel chair, they bought a Naza Ria. It was then modified “MTV Pimp my Ride” style with a hydraulic ramp in the back. Read my posts here and here.

The total cost for modifying the car was quite expensive but it was well worth it because it made life much easier for Atok.

If you have something similar in mind, I recommend you check out this site on handicap equipped vans. They have a number of topics. One discusses whether you should buy a full sized van or a mini van(the latter handling better on the road and getting superior gas mileage but potentially not spacious enough for some users. Another interesting and very important topic is regarding safety. They have provided a link to the NHTSA brochure: Adapting Motor Vehicles for People with Disabilities. Wish I had found this site earlier.

This is a sponsored post.

p.s. Just cam to know that the term "wheelchair-bound" is politically incorrect. The right term is "Wheelchair User".

Tags: Handicap Van Naza Ria Wheelchair user

Hari Raya Aidiladha Gathering

The Malaysian Coventry Society organised a Hari Raya Aidiladha gathering at the Muslim Resource Centre (MRC) today. It was scheduled to start at 9 am but we were late preparing the kids and only got there at 10am. Actually we were fortunate because the guests were only starting to arrive.

It was nice to meet up with the other Malaysians (mostly students) here in Coventry. As usual there were the speeches. We were also introduced to the new committee members. There was a speech by an Ustaz from the Malaysian Students Department. I felt that it was a bit long drawn. Probably because my BM is not really good and maybe because I was really hungry. Hey! I didn't have my breakfast. I was impressed by the fact that he came all the way from London to be with us.

Anyway, the food was great and we enjoyed ourselves.

Tags: Hari Raya Malaysian Coventry Society

Advice for small business owners

It is estimated that over 98% businesses in Europe, N. America, and Japan are small businesses. However they are not that small when you consider that they employ more than 50% of local populations and produce nearly 50% of the countries GNPs and create more than 2/3 of new jobs. This is according to Cullen and Parboteeah, 2005 in their book Multinational Management: A Strategic Approach.

Anyway, I just came across this really interesting site, which provides free advice for small business owners.


One of the posts was regarding the prediction of Home-based Business Trends in 2007. According to the list compiled by Homestead.com, E-Learning will be one the biggest trends.

With advances in new web application tools such as podcasts and video blogs, development costs will decrease.

Small business owners and entrepreneurs in the US might find the post on the impact of tax law changes on their business, particularly useful.

This is a sponsored post.

Tags: Advice Small business

Compostable bottles

It's quite amazing, the interesting stuff we come across at the strangest of places.

A few days back, I found this empty mineral water bottle in our car, where my wife had left it. As I was about to throw it away, noticed the words:

The UK's first compostable bottle.

That got me curious and I sat down and read what it was all about. It turns out that Belu natural mineral water bottles are made from corn and hence can be composted. According to their website, "Belu donates all it's profits to fund clean water projects in the UK and around the world".

That's pretty amazing.

Some funny stuff on the bottle:
"The penguins approve".
"Store in a clean, dry, rabbit free place".

This post was NOT sponsored by Belu.

Tags: Belu Bottle Compostable Mineral water

Finding love online

Have heard a lot of people saying that you can't find love online. I know for a fact that this is not true. You can indeed find your soul mate on the net.

Four of my closest friends found their partner online and got married to them.

Anyway, even if you are not looking for a life partner, found this great site for Online Dating.

What makes this site different from other dating sites?

Well JustSayHi.com is totally free. Yes that's right. you don't have to pay anything to register but still offer you great features as on any paid site.

Signing up is so easy and fast. You provide your email address, date of birth, inform whether you are looking for a man or woman, your country, your postal code and you are done. You can search by age or by distance. Unfortunately, the locations are limited to cities in the US. So if you are a guy in the UK or Malaysia, looking for someone in your area...Sorry!

However, if you are looking for someone in the US, you are in luck.

This is a sponsored post.

Tags: Online dating JustSayHi

Mother Earth

Wrote this in 1991 while I was an undergraduate student in India., titled : Where is the World going to?

Destruction of the rain forests- the lungs of the Earth; increasing number of human beings fighting for limited resources; growing urbanisation and industrialisation -- more and more cities and factories, cars and other vehicles- churning out smoke and rubbish; polluted rivers and oceans; endangered species of flora and fauna and most serious of all - toxic and radioactive waste.

The warning signs are already here, but we just ignore them. Warming of the Earth's atmosphere, ozone holes over the poles, melting of the polar ice caps and acid rain.

Are the increasing incidences of floods, storms, earthquakes and other natural disasters, the emergence of new deadly and strange diseases - AIDS, the JE Virus, the Nipah virus, Chicken Flu, Mad Cow disease - a sign that Mother Earth has had enough.

Why do we forget that, even though we are separated by man made boundaries - we live on the same Earth and breathe the same air.

Are we really superior to other species of animals?
The way we act sometimes, shows that deep down we are the worst of beasts. If we don't stop to think and act before its too late...
In the end, it might be us the human beings, who come under the endangered list.

When we talk about the Environment and the need to preserve it, many people just ignore it saying:
- It's none of our business;
- It's the Government's Job;
- Why should the Third World worry about polllution when the developed countries are the worst polluters;
- What can we do?
- Leave that to Green Peace and other tree huggers.
.... and so on.

Come on Guys! We can't continue giving excuses. The environment is everybody's business. After all we inherited it from our ancestors and we are only borrowing it from our children.

The fact that the developed nations are the worst polluters doesn't mean that the developing world has to follow them. We should learn from the mistakes that they made and avoid making the same. We can start by teaching our children to recycle, teaching them the wonders of nature and to save energy. We can't leave that to the Green Peace movement. It's everybody's duty.

"The Forest is a peculiar organism of unlimited kindness and benevolence that makes no demand for its sustenance and extends generally the products of its life activity; it affords protection to all beings, offering shade to the axe man who destroys it." -- Gautama Buddha

Tags: Earth Environment

Cheap Hosting Plan

In the past few years, I have noticed a growing trend. A lot of people are moving away from Geocities and other free web hosts and building personal websites with unique domain names.

Of course not all of them intend to use their sites for commercial purposes but is more of a "buying my home on the net" thing. This includes a lot of my friends who have suddenly realised that "selling" yourself is not necessarily a bad thing, especially in the education and consulting sectors. Many of these guys have a blog instead of a static site (which is a relatively new development in Malaysia)

After talking to some of my fellow bloggers I have come to the conclusion that most people are looking for a basic web hosting plan. Most want a host that 1) has lot of storage space (you will be surprised how much you have posted once the blogging bug bites), 2) A lot of bandwidth, 3) Is affordable. Only a few are looking for Content Management Systems (CMS) or e-commerce tools.

I just came across on of the most amazing hosting plans on the net. The basic plan on Lunarpages Web Hosting gives you 800GB of data transfer and 35GB of storage space. They are also giving you $700 worth of CoffeeCup webmaster and design software for FREE. That's not all. The most amazing part is that this package includes a Free Domain Name for Life for the life of the hosting account. All of this for only $6.95 a month.


In case you are wondering about the $700 worth of CoffeeCup software. This includes over 35 free scripts such as the VisualSite Designer, HTML Editor, Direct FTP, Web Video Player, Flash Photo Gallery, Flash Blogger and lots more.

For your information, the company has been in business for over 6 years and have one of the most reliable servers in the industry are housed in 2 data centers (99.9% uptime). Their award winning support is available 24/7. this does not include the help desk, forums, tutorials and their blog.

Guys who are already stuck with other hosts need not worry. They have a special offer whereby, the paid time (up to 6 months) will be added to their new 12 or 24 month hosting plan with Lunar Pages.

If you utilize the transfer offer which is upto 18 months of hosting plus the extras, it will still cost you $70 (comes to around $3.80 per month).

Lunarpages also offers additional domain names and domain transfers for only $7.95 each.

To get $25 off any 12/24 month Basic, Business, Windows or VPS plan, use the following Coupon code: lunar25off

However please note that the coupons are not stackable. So if you are pushing the transfer time offer please phone in your order and they will apply the extra time plus the discount.


This post is sponsored by Lunarpages.com

In case you do choose to host with them, you can help me earn some money by going over to joining in the Lunarpages Affiliate Program.

Tags: Lunarpages Hosting